Habu's Brain makes Chess Life magazine

The Tiger Woods of Japanese Chess, or Shogi, is Habu Yoshiharu, a young man who has wiped out the opposition and has won every title in shogi.

So great is his dominance of this traditional Japanese game that Habu is regarded as possibly the smartest person in Japan, to such an extent that his brain is being analyzed to see why it works so much better than anybody else's.

Habu Yoshiharu

Articles about "Habu's Brain" have become standard fare in the Japanese press.

Having no worlds left to conquer in the field of shogi, Habu recently decided to take up a similar game called chess. Habu is not the first Japanese professional player of go or shogi to take up chess. There have long been rumors that several famous go players were masters at chess, such as Fujisawa Hosai, who is it said briefly took up chess after World War II because he feared that General McArthur would make go illegal. However, Fujisawa Hosai and the others never played a public game of chess, because they were not grandmasters and if they faced world-class competition they would only embarrass themselves and Japan.

It was thus a great surprise which Habu showed up at the Chicago Open in May, prepared to do battle with some of the world's leading chess grandmasters.

Organizers of the Chicago Open could not understand why so many Japanese journalists showed up to cover the event. Nobody told them who Habu was.

This month's August Chess Life, page 36, just out, carries the game Habu played against Grandmaster Alex Yermolinsky. Chess Life makes no mention of who Habu is.

The game is really wild. Habu plays in a style reminiscent of Duncan Suttles. Suttles used to say "The strongest square for the knight is king's bishop two." Sure enough, Habu plays 23. Nf7.

In time trouble, Habu missed a fantastic move. He could have played 40. .... Nxe4 threatening mate on f2. The resulting position is so complicated that nobody can say what the outcome would have been.

Habu lost the game, but this was quite a good effort for an absolute beginner at chess playing for the first time against one of the world's leading grandmasters.